TELOSscope: The Telos Press Blog

We're Not in Kansas Anymore

Isaac Lopez’s comments in “Why Trump Will Win” anticipate Trump’s reelection as the result of a reactionary backlash by a conservative moderate public. This backlash is directed at a weak and failing leadership in the Republican Party and a Democratic Party that has abandoned the “silent majority” for the interests of minorities and women. Yet not only is it questionable whether this analysis of the backlash offers any insight, it is questionable whether the backlash is even representative of mainstream public opinion. There is more of a consensus for the progressive agenda than Lopez is willing to admit. The wealthy suburbs of New York are as much inclined to vote for a progressive Black gay candidate as a working-class district in Queens is inclined to elect a progressive Latinx. Most of all, let us not forget that even in the face of personal animosity, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by 3 million votes. So how does all of this square with the reactionary backlash of the “silent majority”?

As we all know, Trump won the presidency through the Electoral College by winning Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania with about 70 thousand votes. It is possible that the reactionary backlash in these states flipped them for Trump. But not only does this not make them representative of public opinion, given the fragmented, unverified, and biased sources that feed public opinion today; it is questionable whether the reactionary backlash is itself founded on serious grievances. With demographic inequalities shifting the balance of federal power to states less representative of the national consensus, the outcome of presidential elections is determined by a few states where local opinion, whether informed, uninformed, or dis-informed, can determine the long-term outcome of national politics.

The Republican leadership of the past 25 years, Lopez’s critique notwithstanding, has pushed an agenda that at one and the same time created and fed a reactionary backlash as the road to power. I see no weak leadership but rather a coordinated effort to take control of the Congress, the presidency, and the courts for the conservative program: evidence the crime bills, the balanced budget agenda, the elimination of Glass-Steagall, and the failure to legislate affordable healthcare. Then there was the obsessive pursuit of the Clintons, whether through conspiracy theories around Vince Foster or the impeachment of Bill Clinton. In all cases, the Republican Party has come to rely on its more extreme elements for its legitimacy, while those same elements push the party to reject the ruling political protocols in pursuit of their ideology. Lopez’s attempt to curse both houses loses credibility as we see him place the bulk of the blame for the backlash on the legislative overreach of Obama-era Democrats. Yet the reactionary backlash to the stimulus bill that became the Tea Party was simply an expression of the familiar small government/free enterprise rhetoric, even in the face of the failure of free markets. What was new was what the crisis revealed: how the “free” market relies on the government as the buyer of last resort and as the final arbiter of an orderly market by which conservatives define their public sphere.

Lopez’s critique of progressive overreach extends to the constitutionality of gay marriage and the ACA. But why is the decision in Obergefell undemocratic for religious conservatives? Because they find their rights in southern revivalism, not the Constitution: the government is the establishment church that in its progressive policies is an apostasy to faith. By giving credence to the conservative battle for the church against the state, the progressive legislation that Lopez criticizes becomes the Leviathan threatening the road to salvation. For Lopez then to characterize the ACA as unpopular is again to define public opinion as the opinion of the conservative base. By the time the ACA came before the Supreme Court, over 90 percent of the American public were insured, with its protections for preexisting conditions now taken as a fundamental right. When it comes to the electoral public, James Carville’s other prescient insight, “don’t forget healthcare,” has emerged as a challenge to the Republican Party. With Democrats now making its repeal a major campaign issue, its unpopularity exists solely among a Republican base hostile to big government.

To save the Trump supporters from Trump, Lopez argues that most of them do not really endorse his behavior but support him by default. They are typical working-class whites from both parties left behind by technological globalization and a “woke-obsessed Democratic Party.” No doubt technological development and the globalization of markets have led to the loss of jobs among working-class whites. Nevertheless any attempt to help this group has been undermined by a Republican ideology that rejects government safety nets while eroding the power of unions. Their belief that business growth is the answer to all social ills continues to fail the working class. As Lopez says, the political ideology that feeds the reactionary backlash is shaped by socialization, experiences, and self-interest; yes, but within the framework of negative freedom. What COVID has clearly done is turned this philosophy on itself. Your refusal to obey the rules of public health may be your freedom, but it is a threat to my life.

As for the “woke-obsessed Democrats” who are blind to a “different view,” this view is really the tendency to dismiss past injustices as anachronistic and believe historically disenfranchised groups exploit them for contemporary gain. In the wake of this fact alone, that by the Civil War 40 percent of the GDP and 60 percent of U.S. exports came from slave labor, ignoring the basis of past injustices is to perpetuate them, which the American public now understands. In this way, the criticism of the “woke-obsessed Democrats” misses the real story: the progressive backlash that we first saw nationally with Bernie Sanders’s candidacy. If being a liberal and card-carrying member of the ACLU were once dangerous associations, that is now overtaken by the accusation of being a socialist. The leftist backlash has moved from street protest to running for political office. Progressive movements are overturning established Democratic politicians while challenging Republican candidates in what once were bankable states such as Georgia, North Carolina, Iowa, and Texas. This is the “silent majority” speaking out. But Lopez diminishes this progressive backlash. Can you really dismiss the outrage over the killing of George Floyd to COVID cabin fever? Is being censored on Twitter equatable with the Cultural Revolution? Here Lopez engages in the same hyperbole he attributes to the “woke-obsessed.”

Trump’s electoral prospect remains dependent on marginal elements in battleground states. What is key is not the mobilization of a “silent majority” but the extent to which enough of the conservative base can be pushed further to the right with Trump’s trigger warnings. But as Lindsay Graham said in 2012, “[The Republican Party is] not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term.” Given this, what is Lopez’s analysis other than an argument for the Know-Nothing. With over 220 thousand plus deaths from COVID, his dismissiveness of the warnings of politicians, experts, and scientists sounds like talking points from the Trump campaign: the media is biased; Antifa is downplayed; the science community is hysterical; a Biden presidency will be controlled by AOC and the “socialist” Democrats; and most of all conservatives with a “different view” are violently threatened. This is argued in light of contradictory evidence. Meanwhile you have an administration that is handling current problems like a PR crisis and whose only real policy is survival of the fittest. What is Lopez’s response? Roosevelt, Churchill, and the “silent majority,” which sounds like the call for a strong, charismatic leader backed by a populist movement.

If the “silent majority” is public opinion, it is increasingly progressive and no longer silent in what it wants: healthcare, gay rights, progressive taxes, better public education, job training, environmental responsibility, diversity, police reform, gun control. This is the country most people appear to want to live in. For the time being, conservative forces may be winning the political battle, given the idiosyncrasies of the federal system, but they are losing civil society. As Malcolm X said, the chickens have come home to roost. In the coming days, we still face the possibility of history repeating itself: but what was once a farce is now a tragedy.

6 comments to We’re Not in Kansas Anymore

  • I understand this piece is meant as advocacy, and I generally agree with the demographic argument. But it does not really engage Lopez’s ideas. And I was struck by: “In the wake of this fact alone, that by the Civil War 40 percent of the GDP and 60 percent of U.S. exports came from slave labor,. . . ” Source?

    A quick check puts the slave population in the US in 1860 at just over 10% of the population. Responsible for 40% of GDP? That is, the multiplier for slave labor was 4? Whereas non-slave labor, 90% of the population, had to be multiplied by 2/3, to produce the remaining 60% of GDP? So slave labor was almost 600% more efficient? Really? And by the same logic, the South enjoyed the material/economic advantage during the Civil War?

    More fundamentally, the injustice of slavery has nothing to do with the productivity of slaves, nor can Black history since be understood by linear extrapolation from the situation 150 years ago, not incidentally minimizing Black agency in the ensuing years. I realize the “historical” language here is not meant as such, but is essentially a mode of advocacy, and a familiar one in context.

    But, speaking as a law professor, advocacy is tiresome, especially these days . . . and a little more care would be nice. Even when I agree to substantial extent.

  • Florindo Volpacchio

    Prof. Westbrook: Thank you for your reply. Regarding the connection between slavery and the modern economy, see Sarah Churchill’s “The Lehman Triology” and Wall Street’s Debt To Slavery” NYRB June 11, 2019 for a quick overview. There is a reason “cotton was king;” and it sat on the throne of slavery. The point here I think was simply to say those who feel not responsible for past foundational injustices, still benefit from them. As for Lopez’s ideas: the only one I saw was for the inclusion of the angry white men, whose reactionary backlash is still fed by the culture wars. As a law professor, I think you can see the oxymoronic basis of the conservative argument which uses the US constitution to confirm natural rights. You see this as recently as Alito’s and Thomas’s reference to Obergefell; namely, to overturn the “novel constitutional right over the religious liberty interests explicitly protected in the First Amendment.” Let’s just think this through to its logical conclusion: if Alito and Thomas in the Kim Davis case argue that she is being victimized for refusing to issue as a public and civil servant a marriage license to a gay couple on the ground of her religious convictions, what’s to stop those Justices from invoking the First Amendment and refuse to enforce laws that violate their religious beliefs? If critique is advocacy I am guilty.

  • Kenneth D. Johnson

    Dr. Volpacchio’s reference here is in fact to Sarah Churchwell in the NYRB. The link is at
    https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/06/11/the-lehman-trilogy-and-wall-streets-debt-to-slavery/

  • Daniel Miller

    Florindo Volpacchio’s article offers an illuminating study in how ideological credulity distorts political analysis. In reality, the United States in 2020 is not divided between what he terms, without defining, progressive and reactionary forces, but a global totalitarian oligarchy comparable to a crime syndicate, for which Joe Biden is a striking symbol, and a civic nationalist resistance movement, for which Trump is an uncertain tribune. Volpacchio’s invocation of a “progressive Latinx” in Queens reveals his uncritical investment in an artificial syntax, and an artificial politician. “Latinx” is an alien term of unknown provenance which Latinos overwhelmingly reject in the rare cases when they’ve heard of it. His recitation of the questionable statistics concerning Covid deaths, which he pins on Trump, before ending with an encomium to the authority of experts, exemplifies his partisan naivety. This naivety is further suggested by his rhetorical claim of an “obsessive pursuit of the Clintons” as if the actions of the Clintons arouse no justifiable, non-partisan suspicion. Volpacchio speaks of a “Republican base hostile to big government” as if suspicion of big government was not the founding principle of the United States, and as if the Republicans really represent their base. To be sure, the deviation from this principle and the assembly of a Federal leviathan is the story of American history since at least FDR. Nonetheless, it remains mysterious on what constitutional basis the Federal government has the authority to compel Americans to purchase health insurance, or to weaponize the IRS to investigate political enemies, as the Obama Administration did, among its other innovations. “Can you really dismiss the outrage over the killing of George Floyd,” Volpacchio asks. According to Chief Hennepin County Medical Examiner Dr. Andrew Baker, George Floyd probably died from a fentanyl overdose, along with around a hundred thousand other Americans this year alone, whose deaths do not produce outrage, presumably because, unlike with Floyd, outrage isn’t manufactured by the US corporate media. The result of the outrage over Floyd, of course, was the deaths of dozens across America, as the corporate-sponsored and Fortune 500-supported BLM looted US cities, and a shocking spike in violent crime, mostly affecting Black Americans. This outcome doesn’t seem to have produced much outrage either. Nor can its dynamics be grasped by a purely ideological analysis grounded on a battle between reactionary and progressive forces.

  • James Kulk

    Let’s go with your assumption that there is a significant progressive backlash that is no longer silent and based on serious grievances. Lets also look at a significant part of that progressive backlash–those, say, between the ages of 16 and 30 and the cultural environment and the type of cultural issues that are of key importance to them.

    Most statistics I have seen indicate a plague of accelerating suicide, depression and other forms of mental illness–especially among college age students–which I see as directly related to the increasing difficulty of personal identity formation/construction in a society dedicated to self-government, equality, dignity and freedom of choice–all central ideas in most concepts of nationalism.

    Since many of you associated with Telos are teachers of college students–what do you see as the causes of this accelerating plague of mental illness and suicide among the younger generation and to what extent are such mental/cultural issues contributing to “progressive” politics?

  • Florindo Volpacchio

    Mr. Johnson. Thank you for the correction and link, much appreciated. As for Mr. Miller, all I can say is: very interesting…and something I just can’t take seriously..were you searching for the
    QAnon link?. As for Mr. Kulk, not quite sure what point you are trying to make: possibly cast aspersions of progressive politics and mental illness? In any event, to all: thank you for your responses.